About Me

Although I haven't gotten a western made yet, there's interest in a western series I've created (on paper). If you'd like to take a look at the sort of things I write, please visit my website, www.henrycparke.com. Thanks for looking!

MY Q&A WITH INSP-TV

HENRY ON ‘WRITER’S BLOCK’

On July 30th, 2015, I was the guest of hosts Bobbi Jean Bell and Jim Christina on ‘Writer’s Block’, their L.A. TALK-RADIO talk-show about the art and craft of writing. You can click PLAY to hear it, or DOWNLOAD to download it.

ROUND-UP ON THE RADIO!

Last Christmastime I was a guest on AROUND THE BARN, and had a great time talking about the Round-up, my writing, and Gene Autry’s Christmas music. To listen, click HERE.

Other Stuff I Write

While this blog is strictly about Western stuff, I also write another blog, Stalling Tactics, which is about anything else. If you'd like to read my most recent post, COSTUME DRAMA TRAUMA, go HERE.

Thursday, July 14, 2016

I rarely update a
Round-up post, except to correct errors.
But as the movie OUTLAWS AND ANGELS has just become available on
YouTube, Vudu, Google Play Movies & TV, and iTunes, and having just had the
opportunity to interview two of its stars, Frances Fisher of TITANIC and
UNFORGIVEN, and Francesca Eastwood,

incidentally the daughter of Frances Fisher
and Clint Eastwood, I’ve decided to front-load my interviews and review onto
the current Round-up post.

The OUTLAWS AND ANGELS cast at Sundance

Written and directed by
JT Mollner, OUTLAWS AND ANGELS is the story of three on-the-lam villains, led
by Chad Michael Murray, who hole-up in the home of a frontier family, the
Tildons. Ben Browder is the father, Teri
Polo the mother, and the daughters are Francesca Eastwood and Madisen
Beaty. Frances Fisher plays Esther, the
aunt of one of the outlaws.

FRANCESCA EASTWOOD
Interview

Francesca Eastwood

HENRY: Most of us don’t
start life with a pair of movie stars as their parents, and acting as the
family business. Have you always wanted
to act?

FRANCESCA: I’ve always been aware of it, and I grew up
going on location with my parents and visiting them on set. I always loved it and admired it. I had a vivid imagination as a child, and I
loved playing pretend. I wanted to act,
and my parents used me in a couple of things when I was younger. Then I didn’t
want to act, and they were very supportive of that. I came back to it on my own when I was about
eighteen. I was twenty-one when I shot
OUTLAWS AND ANGELS, and I feel like it’s the first of hopefully many
films.

HENRY: Do you have any
interest in following your father’s footsteps behind the camera?

FRANCESCA: I do have interest behind the camera one
day. Some people would probably say I’m
annoying to work with because I ask questions about things -- how cameras work, and how this works and
what that means. This is a great
learning experience, and hopefully I can take that with me and maybe one day,
if I feel I need to tell a story, I can do something behind the camera.

HENRY: There’s probably
nobody alive today that knows more about Westerns, on both sides of the camera,
than your dad. Did he give you advice?

FRANCESCA: I didn’t really emphasize to him that it was
a Western! (laughs) I didn’t really look
at it as a Western, going into it. I looked
at it as a family drama. I just looked
at it as a character, and I’m going to tell the story as best as I possibly can. I
don’t remember exactly what my parents said at the time, but probably something
embarrassingly positive. (laughs)

HENRY: When you’ve
worked with your mother in other films, like STARS FELL ON HENRIETTA (1995) and
TRUE CRIME (199), you were a little kid.
What’s it like working with her as an adult?

FRANCESCA: It was really cool getting to go to work, see
her do her thing, that I’ve seen her do so many time, but to do it on a project
that I was actually involved with separately.
It was really cool to sit behind the monitors. That was the first time I saw any of what the
film looks like. And I thought it looks
so cool, and really reminiscent of the films of the 70s and 80s, and I loved
it. It was very cool to see that, and to
see her working with characters that I was also working with.

HENRY: You don’t have
scenes together in the film. Did she
give you any advice?

FRANCESCA: Yes.
She’s given me so much advice over the years, and so much guidance. She also gave me space to do my own thing, to
make my own choices. To tell the truth,
and to focus. To always know what you
want, and how many ways you’re going to try and get it.

HENRY: I’m almost
afraid to ask; are you much like your character, Florence?

FRANCESCA: (laughs) I
think there are some similarities. This
project, for me, was very similar to what she was going through, so far as
starting a new chapter in her life. I
feel like this was a new chapter for me, and it was empowering for me, to do a
project that I really believe in. I feel like I got to be an artist, for lack
of a better way to say it. It was very
much beginning of her life as an adult, and that’s how I kind of feel this
project was for me. But (laughs), I
think that’s the only way that we are
similar.

HENRY: To try and get
into your character’s head a little, Florence lives in a family with a degenerate
father, an enabling mother, and a hateful sister. But she’s isolated – no close neighbors, to
let her see what ‘normal’ looks like.

FRANCESCA: Absolutely.
Reading the script, or as an audience member, you see so clearly that
this is wrong. I think there is a deep
hatred for her family, but there’s also love.
You know, that’s all she knows.
So it’s still frightening, and what she goes through is a hard decision.
I don’t think she knows fully what she’s
going to do until right before a lot of the time. There’s only a small amount of calculating
that she did. And playing her love for
the family, even in a situation like that was important.

HENRY: Who did you
particularly enjoy working with?

FRANCESCA: I loved
working with everyone. Madeson was
really wonderful. And we got along so
well, I think it really made it work that we didn’t get along so well on
camera. Teri Polo was amazing. And I was very impressed how she could go
from Teri to (her character) Ada, so different, at the drop of a hat. She could turn it off and turn it on
quickly. Ben was incredible, and Chad
really took me under his wing and encouraged me to do my best work.

HENRY: Are we likely to
see an OUTLAWS AND ANGELS 2?

FRANCESCA: I think no. (laughs) It’s the beginning of a
new life for my character, so I definitely think it would be interesting. I hope to do more Westerns, and I’d love to
play a character, maybe her, older, or in times past.

HENRY: Did anything
about making a Western surprise you?

FRANCESCA: It was all a
new experience; I’d never been on-set of a Western before. My parents did that before I was born. Actually no, I was in HENRIETTA, technically,
but I was one year old. It was all very
new and very special.

HENRY: What’s your next
project?

FRANCESCA: Well, my next feature is called THE VAULT, and
I have two more lined up, but I can’t talk about them yet.

FRANCES FISHER Interview

Frances Fisher in UNFORGIVEN

When you acted with
your daughter in the past, in THE STARS FELL ON HENRIETTA and TRUE CRIME, she
was a little kid. What is it like
working with her now as two grown-ups?

FRANCES: Well, unfortunately I didn’t get a chance to actually
work with her (in the same scenes), but hopefully we will in the future. But watching her work was wonderful; her
concentration was amazing. She was so
friendly, and amenable to everything going on around her. She was such a professional, and I was so
proud of her. When she first started out
I would help her with auditions, so we’ve acted together like that – reading
her lines with her, and helping her make choices. She’s good, she’s got it, you know?

HENRY: She’s very good. I enjoyed her work in the film. She and I talked a couple of days ago, and
she told me she gave up acting for a time, and then came back to it.

FRANCES: I always knew she was going to be an
actress. Because I saw how she’d played
dress-up in the house, and imitate characters.
She would make me play out scenes from TITANTIC incessantly, because she
was obsessed with Kate Winslet. (laughs)
So I had a feeling she would go into the family business. Then she said she didn’t want to because
everyone assumed she would. But then she
did a couple of jobs, and she really got bit by the bug, as they say. She didn’t take any acting lessons when she
first started; she has since studied with people like Larry Moss, and taken
scene classes and things like that, but she’s got a natural ability that is
great.

HENRY: This is your
third Western that I know of, following UNFORGIVEN (1992), and an episode of
YOUNG RIDERS (1991) –

FRANCES: -- Oh my God -- YOUNG RIDERS! I forgot all about that one!

HENRY: What do you
think of the genre, after the third time?

FRANCES: I think there’s more to explore, and I think
JT Mollner does a terrific job of bending some of our perceptions of what
Westerns are. Because of some of the scenes
he wrote are so unusual, I’ve never seen anything like them in Westerns. I think it just something that’s in our
consciousness. It’s our American
history, the Western, and I don’t think anyone’s going to get tired of seeing a
good Western, when everyone walked around with guns, everyone could open-carry,
you know? (laughs)

HENRY: Did you grow up
with Westerns?

FRANCES: Not
particularly. I actually grew up
overseas, and I didn’t really see any movies or any television until I moved
back to the States when I was eleven years old.
I didn’t have much exposure to anything like that.

HENRY: You were born in
Great Britain?

FRANCES: Yes. I
was only there for a year, and then we moved.
Because my father built oil refineries and steel mills all over the
world. The job took him to many, many
countries, and he just took the family along.
I’ve been on location all my life.

HENRY: Do you have any
favorite actresses in Westerns?

FRANCES: I think about the old Westerns, even though
they were shot in the ‘50s and ‘60s, and everybody had on full make-up, and
hair done up like they’d walked out of a beauty parlor. But Amanda Blake, Miss Kitty from GUNSMOKE,
of course: I loved Miss Kitty. She was
great.

HENRY: You’ve starred
in films with tremendous, deserved acclaim – TITANTIC (1997), UNFORGIVEN – and
tremendous budgets. And you’ve also done
small budget films, like OUTLAWS AND ANGELS.
How do you choose your projects, and how different is the experience in
a low-budget film?

FRANCES: Well, I choose the project by what the role
is; obviously the role is the most important thing. And I like a challenge, like the one in
OUTLAWS is a very different character than I’ve ever played. And also the people involved; if they’re
people I admire, obviously that makes a different. I just love to work, you know and pretty much,
I’ll take anything that’s not a horror movie.
If it’s something that sparks me, I’m connecting with the character, if
I feel that I understand who she is, so I can play her authentically, that’s
the most important thing. (SPOILER ALERT
– IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN THE FILM YET, SKIP THE REST OF THIS ANSWER) And the
difference between working on a big budget or a low budget? Well! (laughs). You know, low-budget movies, everyone’s
scrambling. Everybody’s helping each
other do all the jobs. On OUTLAWS I was
helping the prop kids make the bloody heads that Francesca puts on the horse at
the end. I was helping make them look
more authentic, because they were too little.
I would say to them, “You have to look at Keith Loneker’s head. You see how big his head is? You’ve got to put a big head in the
bag.” So we were running around getting
stick and rocks and dirt to fill up the head bag and make it look bigger. It’s fun, because it just takes you back to
your roots. And it’s great working on a
low-budget movie because mostly it’s young people, who are just starting out in
the business, and everybody’s working so hard, they’re enthusiastic, and that’s
a great feeling, to be on the set with people who are really excited about what
they’re doing.

HENRY: You have one key
scene in OUTLAWS AND ANGELS, you’re wonderfully passionate in it, and not to
give too much away, but you take a lot of abuse. Was it hard to shoot?

FRANCES: Not really,
no. We worked out all the stunts, the
moves. It wasn’t difficult; it was fast,
because we were losing the light of course – we always do that. So we didn’t get many takes. It’s the kind of
thing where, on film, you have to be ready to go. You do a quick rehearsal, work out the moves,
roll the dice, and see what works. That
whole thing with going into close-up, wasn’t really supposed to happen that
way. But my passion really got a hold of
me, and fortunately the DP was so good he was able to keep focus on me when I
came in close on the screen. That
worked out really well – I think we only did it once or twice before we had to
move on. It turned out really, really
good. I’m very happy with it.

HENRY: You’ve done many
historical films of different periods.
Do you feel you have a special affinity for period movies? What are your favorites? Do you have a favorite period in history?

FRANCES: You know, but
I was just looking at some photographs of Francesca when she was visiting me on
the set of THE AUDREY HEPBURN STORY (2000), and going into another period of
time is fun, because there’s so much research you can do. I just love being able to transform into
another character; and being able to go into another time period is great
also. I’m going to work on something
next week that takes place in 1963, Birmingham, when those four little girls
were blown up in that church. So I’m
looking forward to doing more research.
I’m well aware of it, but I’m going to refresh my memory of that time period,
and go back into 1960s hair and all of that.

OUTLAWS AND ANGELS – A
Film Review

By Henry C. Parke

OUTLAWS AND ANGELS has
a wonderful premise – take Joseph Hayes’ THE DESPERATE HOURS, and set it in the
Old West. In Hayes’ novel, play and
screenplay, the latter directed by William Wyler in 1955, a trio of escaped
convicts terrorize an innocent family whose home they’ve invaded. While the police are searching for the bad
guys, the family members must rise to the occasion and defend themselves, or
they’ll surely die.

First-time feature
writer and director JT Mollner has upped the ante by making the outlaws (Chad
Michael Murray, Steven Michael Quezada and Keith Loneker) not escaped convicts,
but the perps of a startling and bloody bank robbery. The opening scene is wonderfully abrupt and
upsetting, and you know just how bad these guys are when they arrive at the
home of the unsuspecting Tildon family.
The family is isolated to begin with, and with tuberculosis sweeping
through the nearby town, casual guests are not wished-for.

And here is where Mollner
gets too cute for his own good. Instead
of a normal family fighting evil, he decides to make the family as creepy as
the outlaws. The father (Ben Browder) is
a degenerate. The mother (Teri Polo) is
his cliché-Christian enabler (and by the way, why is it that outside of
faith-based movies, nearly every
religious character is a hypocrite or a fool?).
The older daughter (Madisen Beaty) is a hateful bitch, and her younger
sister (Francesca Eastwood) is…well, a younger and somewhat less hateful bitch. So who do you root for? You don’t care about anyone, and the
least-worst characters gets worse as it goes on.

A pair of aunt and
uncle abettors, played with wonderful verve by Frances Fisher and Luce Rains,
make a dynamic impression early on, but are quickly dispatched, again in a way
that destroys empathy for other characters whom we’re meant to care about.

And of course, while
the endless night is happening, the outlaws should be relentlessly pursued by a
posse. But the posse is lead by the lethargic
Luke Wilson, who plays his entire role of disinterested tracker for comedy, seemingly
modeling his performance on Gene Wilder’s in BLAZING SADDLES. He creates anti-suspense.

Chad Michael Murray and
Francesca Eastwood are the eerie Romeo and Juliet of the piece. He mostly plays straight-man to the
screwyness around him. Eastwood has the
most to do, and carries her role with surprising confidence, beauty, and a
quirky style that is enjoyable to watch in spite of the odd things she’s asked
to do.

Cinematographer Matthew
Irving (WAITRESS, 2007) does wonderful things with the Santa Fe locale – much
more than just making it beautiful. Mollner
knows how to direct actors, and he knows how to write smart dialogue and scenes
that will appeal to actors; but he doesn’t know how much to trim them – some
sequences go on endlessly. And even
Tarantino didn’t try so hard or so long to get laughs out of threatened
sodomy. I look forward to better things
from everyone involved.

THE TIMBER – A Film
Review

Josh Peck and James Ransome

Gregory Peck starred in
every kind of movie imaginable, and brought his dignity, magnetism, sly
amusement, and projected sense of honour to all of his roles. Best known for his Oscar-winning performance
in TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD (1962), he did equally well in romantic comedies like
ROMAN HOLIDAY (1953), thrillers like MIRAGE (1965), and he particularly made
his mark in Westerns, starting with THE YEARLING (1946) (more about that from Claude
Jarman Jr. in the TCM article), DUEL IN THE SUN (1946), THE YELLOW SKY (1948), THE
GUNFIGHTER (1950), ONLY THE VALIANT (1951) and many more, all the way to BILLY
TWO HATS (1972) (check out my review in the July issue of True West), and playing Lincoln in the BLUE AND GREY (1982)
miniseries.

So Gregory’s grandson
Josh Peck has some major shoes to fill in his first Western, THE TIMBER,
directed and co-written by Anthony O’Brien, and available in DVD and Blu-Ray
from Lionsgate.

Set in the Yukon Gold
Rush of 1898, Samuel (Josh Peck, of the RED DAWN remake) and Wyatt (James
Ransome of SINISTER and THE WIRE) are brothers whose family farm is about to be
taken by the bank. In a last-ditch
effort to save the place, they make a deal with the banker, (Julian Glover of
GAME OF THRONES) to act as bounty hunters with a very unusual quarry: their own
father. It seems that the old man (David
Bailie – ‘Cotton’ of the PIRATES OF THE CRIBBEAN franchise) got gold fever,
went prospecting in the mountains, went a bit mad and killed some folks, and
never came back. A bone of contention
between the brothers arises almost immediately: the warrant says ‘dead or
alive.’ Family man Samuel plans to bring
his father back to stand trial; Wyatt, less forgiving for his father’s abandonment,
has no qualms about bringing him back dead.

Most of the picture
takes place as the brothers climb ever higher into the snow-covered mountains,
arguing, making friends or enemies with the lawman and mountain men they meet,
and gradually losing all of their equipment and animals in this quest which
they are clearly not equipped for in any sense of the word.

Despite O’Brien’s skill
as a director, and the interesting characterizations by Peck and Ransome, monotony
begins to set in. We know Wyatt is the
bad brother because he tells us he is – there is far too much telling and too
little showing throughout. Conversely,
with very sparse data the audience is supposed to divine an awful lot about
Samuel’s relationship with his wife (Elisa Lasowski). The mountain men and/or prospectors are all
insane and all indistinguishable. Samuel’s dream sequences are more confusing
than revealing. The snowy mountains are
beautiful, but unchanging. THE TIMBER
was shot at the MediaPro Studios in Bucharest, and knowing that the Yukon Mountains
were in fact the Carpathians, one wonders if the mad mountain men were
influenced more by gold fever or Vlad the Impaler.

THE TIMBER is a solid
audition for the cast and crew for better-plotted films – the performances are
good, action is exciting and brutal, and the production design and look of the
film are admirable.

THE TIMBER is available
on Amazon Video, Vudu, YouTube, iTunes, and Google Play Movies & TV, and on BluRay and DVD.

TCM CLASSIC FILM
FESTIVAL 2016

The first weekend in
May, Turner Classic Movies held their TCM
Classic Film Festival in Hollywood, in and around Sid Grauman’s fabled
Chinese Theatre. As always, it is the
place and time for film loonies from around the world to meet, and gorge on the
world’s finest films seen under the best circumstances imaginable. Each film is introduced, whenever possible by
someone with a connection to that film. For
instance, Elliot Gould introduced M.A.S.H.; Marlee Matlin introduced CHILDREN
OF A LESSER GOD; Eva Marie Saint introduced THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING! THE
RUSSIANS ARE COMING!; and Gina Lollabrigida introduced BONA SERA MRS.
CAMPBELL. While there was not a great focus on Westerns
this year – only four were shown – their participants were among the very best.

Not a great picture of Keith Carradine,

but at least it's in focus

Keith Carradine, who
every Tuesday and Wednesday in July is hosting ‘SHANE’ AND 100 OTHER GREAT
WESTERNS on TCM, introduced SHE WORE A YELLOW RIBBON (1949). “Thank you all for being here, for supporting
this extraordinary film festival, the only one of its kind that I’m aware of,
that celebrates the legacy of our extraordinary industry, that started here 100
plus years ago. It’s so important that
we are able to preserve these films for future generations, so that they can
understand the beginnings of this craft; so they can see the masters of this
craft when they were at the top of their game.
I believe that this was the sixth time that Ford and John Wayne
collaborated, the sixth out of fourteen altogether. This is one of my favorites, and according to
the Duke, it was one of his favorite performances. It’s kind of a travelogue of Monument
Valley. Which Ford used to great effect
in so many of his films, but in this one he seemed dedicated to showing every
corner of that place. Kayenta (Arizona)
is probably where they all hung out when they were filming. There isn’t much there now; I can’t imagine
what was there in 1948, when they were filming this.

"Extraordinarily beautiful, vivid Technicolor
cinematography by Winton Hoch is beyond compare. And by this time, John Ford’s stock company
is fairly well established, and most of them are here, including my late and
dear friend Harry Carey, Jr., the incomparable Victor McLaglen. Ben Johnson, somebody who made a few Westerns;
he was a serious ham, as they say. That
guy, nobody sat a horse better then Ben Johnson and you can see Ford made full
use of that in this film. You will see a
lot of Ben Johnson doing some major horseback riding. There’s one shot in particular that -- Bobby, my brother, and I were watching it, and we had to smile
and turn to each other and say, ‘Did you see that?’ Because (Ben Johnson) came from behind
camera, and he rode off to do a hard ride across the countryside, but just as
he got into the camera, when he was full-frame, he turned to look back, so you
know it was him. That’s an actor. Thank you for supporting this festival, and
enjoying SHE WORE A YELLOW RIBBON on this glorious screen, the way it should be
seen.”

Claude Jarman, Jr. & Margaret O'Brien

You had to be tough to
handle the next pair that was screened nearly back-to-back: THE YEARLING (1946) and OLD YELLER
(1957). Both beautiful pictures, but
both heartbreakers about children, beloved pets, and tragedy. YEARLING, the story about a rural farming
family, and their son’s love for a young deer, starred Gregory Peck, Jane
Wyman, and Claude Jarman Jr.

After the movie,
Jarman, who played the son, spoke with interviewer Kerry Beauchamp about the
film.

“Clarence Brown, who
directed the film, was determined to find someone from the South, who had not been
in pictures before, to play that role.
And he toured the Southern cities.
He would go into each city, to the board of education, and identify
himself, and say he wanted permission to go to the different grammar schools,
and if he saw anyone he liked, he wanted to talk to them. And if he didn’t, no one would ever know that
he’d been there. He came to my school in
Nashville, Tennessee on a Friday afternoon, I was in 5th grade, saw
me, and the rest is history. I was sent
to the principal’s office. They
introduced themselves, but didn’t say who they were, said they wanted to come
back to my house and take some pictures this afternoon. I told my mother that I didn’t know what
these strange men wanted. My sister said,
‘They were building inspectors, because they came to my room.’ I said this is crazy; I’m not going to pursue
this any further, so I left. And they
came out and I was gone. They called my
mother, so she called and got me home, and then we talked a little bit about
it. Was I interested in it? Well, I’d never read THE YEARLING, but the
strange thing is I was interested in acting: community theatre and school
plays, I always had an interest in it. We
met for the next few days. Then they
said, we’re moving on to Knoxville, and you’ll hear from us. You know the old saying – Don’t call us,
we’ll call you. Nothing’s going to
happen with that. Next thing we know,
next Monday, they call and say, be ready to go to California in a week.

“We started filming in
April. The picture came out the
following December. So it was almost
eighteen months. My father went out with
me, basically as a vacation. We never did test for it. We ended up testing with people they were
testing to cast for the mother. Clarence
said to my father, quit your job; he’s got the role. So I literally spent eighteen months with
Clarence Brown. Ended up making another
picture with him a little later: INTRUDER IN THE DUST (1949). It’s a William Faulkner story about race
relations in Mississippi. And a
lynching. After THE YEARLING I went to
the MGM school for five years, and it was one of the most interesting times
that I ever had. I went to school with
Elizabeth Taylor, Jane Powell, and someone that’s here, that I want to
acknowledge, Margaret O’Brien.”

Margaret O’Brien,
easily recognizable from when she played Tootie in MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS (1944),
then joined Claude on the stage, saying, “And he was my first crush.”

Jarman then continued, “Anyway,
it was a great experience. I spent five years
at MGM; I ended up making eleven films in all.
I made about seven of them at MGM in five years. You always worked – everyone worked on that
lot. Then I left in 1950; the whole business changed, as you know. When I got there, there were twelve people in
the MGM School. When I left, there were
none. So it all changed. I moved back to Tennessee, went back to
school.

“I worked in the summer;
I did RIO GRANDE (1950) with John Wayne, where I played John Wayne’s son. I really had a wonderful time. I don’t regret leaving. I’ve been reflecting on it because I’m trying
to write a book. I’m trying to review
all of this, so next year I’ll have the book.
The thing that really impresses me about THE YEARLING is that it’s one
of those films that an actor gets only one time in a lifetime: that’s when
you’re in every scene. There was a lot
of pressure. It was a movie that was
very, very difficult to do, because you were working with animals that you
could not train. People say, ‘What was
it like working with Gregory Peck?’ He
was the most generous, calm – I never heard him get angry about anything. Normally, in a scene like we did in RIO
GRANDE, John Ford would take us, make a shot, do it like three times at the
most. The average take in this picture was
twenty. And the most we ever had was 150
times. That was when we were waiting for
the deer to follow me. I’d be running
through the forest, and the deer had to come behind (me). 149 times.
So there was a lot of pressure to do it right, because if it played, you
really didn’t want to be the one to screw up the scene. It was the most difficult year and a half I
ever spent when I was making film.
Everything else was a piece of cake.”

ILLEANA DOUGLAS INTERVIEWS
BEVERLY WASHBURN

(SPOILER ALERT – major plot
elements are given away in this interview)

Next there was OLD YELLER (1957), the story of
another rural family, made up of Fess Parker, Dorothy Malone, Tommy Kirk, Kevin
Corcoran, and their dog. Beverly
Washburn, who plays Lisbeth, the neighbor, and romantic interest for Tommy
Kirk, was interviewed by actress and film historian Illeana Douglas, who said it
was still heartbreaking to watch at times.

Beverly Washburn & Illeana Douglas

BEVERLY: I know, it’s a
tearjerker, and I haven’t seen it myself in maybe six, seven years. And I’m a huge animal lover, so when I went
on the audition for the role of Lisbeth I just really, really wanted this part,
because I love animals. And Old Yeller,
his real name was Spike, and they got him out of an animal shelter. So there was only one of him. Like with Rin Tin Tin and Lassie, there were
several Collies and several German Shepherds to do whatever it was that needed
to be done. But because they got him out
of a shelter, he did everything, and he was just a wonderful dog. He had a big dressing room; bigger than
mine. Back then the Weatherwax family
were the ones that trained all the dogs, and what they could do with just a
hand-signal! Watching some of these scenes,
it was hard to watch, because you wondered if they were getting hurt. But they always had someone from the Humane
Society on the set, and they were very careful that the dog was never
hurt. People have asked me if in between
scenes we were able to play with him, toss a ball or a Frisbee or
whatever. Because they took such good
care of him, when he finished his scene he would go into his dressing room and
have his water and his treats. And then
the three of us, Tommy and Kevin and I, we were minors, so we would have to go
to school for three hours. So we were
allowed to pet him, and he was just the sweetest, but we couldn’t really play
with him.

ILLEANA: You can feel in the film there really was a
family atmosphere on the set.

BEVERLY: Dorothy Maguire was just the loveliest
lady. You could tell with this character
how she just exuded warmth; and that’s just exactly how she was in real
life. We filmed it actually in ’56, so
it’s 60 years old. You know, it’s sad to
look back on this film and realize that it’s so long ago that there’s only two
of us still alive from this film. Tommy
Kirk, who played Travis, is unbelievably talented and gifted, and he and I are
still really really good friends. And
sadly, Kevin Corcoran, who played the adorable little Arliss, some of you
probably know that he passed away this last October from cancer. He was just such a sweet guy, and I feel so
blessed to say that we remained friends all these years. And Tommy and I still remain friends and have
dinner together.

ILLEANA: You and Tommy
had a little off-screen chemistry, from what I hear.

BEVERLY: For about a
week and a half. I actually had a crush
on him when we were doing the film. So
we met one Saturday afternoon to go to a movie and to lunch. And he was the first boy that I ever
kissed. And he gave me this very
romantic ring (to show) that we were going together: it was a skull and
crossbones.

ILLEANA: In the pivotal scene, which is so upsetting, where
Travis has to kill Old Yeller, how do you even prepare for that, especially for
a child?

BEVERLY: It was traumatic just to watch it. That scene where he’s in the pen, and the
fire and everything, that was actually filmed on-set, on the stage. It was supposed to have taken place in Texas,
but we never went (there). It was all
filmed at Walt Disney Studios, and then we went on location, past Ventura to a
place called Lake Sherwood. As we get
older, we get to an age where our memories get a little foggy, and we go into
the next room, and can’t remember why we came there. And yet there are still some memories that
are forever embedded in our heart. And I
have to honestly say that having been a part of OLD YELLER is a memory that is
so dear to my heart. And I feel so
blessed just to have been a small part of that movie.

ILLEANA: Did Walt Disney ever come on to the set?

BEVERLY: He would come
on the set daily. He was hands-on, and
he wanted to look over everything, and talk to us. But he never interfered. He let the director direct and the producer
produce. He was just very nice. One of the things that was fun for me
especially is it was back in the days when they were doing the MICKEY MOUSE
CLUB, with Annette, the lovely, sweetest woman in the world, and all the
Mouseketeers. So Tommy and Kevin and I
would have school every day in this big red trailer with all the
Mouseketeers. And I’m still friends with
many of them. Sharon Baird she and I are
best friends; we’ve known each other sixty years.

ILLEANA: You said that even though you didn’t have any
scenes with Fess Parker, you met him years later, and he remembered you.

BEVERLY: He did.
You know, we really didn’t have a scene together; I met him of course on
the set in the last scene, where I’m walking away. Maybe ten years ago they had a Disney
anniversary in Orlando, and they were nice enough to invite me. I went there and I was sitting with Sharon
and some of the Mouseketeers, and I said, ‘Oh look, there’s Fess Parker.’ And she said, ‘You should go over and say
hello to him.’ I said, ‘Oh gosh, it’s
been fifty years, he won’t remember me.’
I had no sooner gotten over to his table when he stood up and gave me a
big hug, and said, ‘Beverly!’ And I was
so overwhelmed that he remembered me. He
invited me to come to his vineyard, where he has the best wines. Just the sweetest man. And the whole cast – I know it sounds cliché,
but we filmed that for three months, and it really truly was like a
family. It’s a memory that I just
treasure.

Beverly Washburn

ILLEANA: I wanted to talk about some of the other
greats that you worked with. You worked
with Kirk Douglas, Loretta Young, and Jack Benny.

BEVERLY: When I was seven or eight it was the first
time I ever worked with Jack Benny. They
had me planted in the audience, and while he’s doing his monologue, I come up
out of the audience, and the orchestra pretends they’re trying to stop me, and
I go up on stage and ask for his autograph.
And it turns out my name is Margaret Truman, that was the gag. It’s in the days of live TV. When you’re a child you’re fearless. But looking back, he really took a chance on
me, because today there’s always a tape delay, so you if something’s said that
shouldn’t be, you can cut and do it again, but back then it went on as we did
it. So he took a chance with me, and it
all went smoothly, and so we stayed in touch until the time he passed
away. And he was one of the most
generous people I’ve ever known in my life.
As we all know, he played the stingy tightwad, but he was anything
but. He was wonderful; and I toured with
him all over the East Coast, appeared with him at The Hollywood Palace, and the
Sahara in Tahoe and Vegas. And I feel so
blessed because, when you’re a child, and you’re directed by Cecil B. DeMille
and George Stevens and Frank Capra and Stanley Kramer, I had no idea, I had no
concept. And it was not until I was an
adult that I realized how truly blessed I was.

ILLEANA: You had a specialty, as a child actor that
you named your book after.

BEVERLY: I don’t know why, but for some reason it
seemed that just about every role I was cast in, I had to cry. My brother used to tease me, ‘Oh, you cry at
supermarket openings.’ It was just easy
for me to cry for some reason, because I was overly emotional. And so my book is called REEL TEARS.

REEL TEARS is available
in paper and audio from Bear Manor Media HERE.

‘BRAVE EAGLE’ AND ‘FISHING
WITH JOHN CARRADINE’ – NEW RELEASES FROM ALPHA!

I’m always excited when
there are new releases from Alpha Video,
because you never know what they’ll come
up with. Their Westerns run the gamut
from silent William S. Hart classics to forgotten B series to live TV
dramas. They put out TV series in
4-episode volumes, and have just released Vol. 6 of HAWKEYE AND THE LAST OF THE
MOHICANS (1957). If you’ve always
thought of John Hart as merely the actor they tried to switch for Clayton Moore
in THE LONE RANGER, you have a pleasant surprise coming. Hart, who plays Hawkeye in all 39 episodes,
is a solid performer in his own right. He
is joined by Lon Chaney Jr., who brings a joyful exuberance to his role of Chinachgook,
the last of the Mohicans that the title refers to. If not much is drawn directly from James Fennimore
Cooper’s stories, these shows are in the spirit of the tales.

Though filmed in
Canada, and with somewhat smaller budgets, the shows are very much like the
other Western kid series of the period: if you enjoyed ANNIE OAKLEY and THE CISCO
KID, you’ll probably enjoy these as well.
All but one were directed by Sam Newfield, the king of PRC, whose 282
directing credits include THE TERROR OF TINY TOWN (1938), the only Western
featuring an all-midget cast. One notable
pleasure in this series is the frequent appearance, as a hateful villain, of John
Vernon, who would later be hateful in THE OUTLAW JOSEY WALES (1976), and most
hateful of all as Dean Wormser in ANIMAL HOUSE (1978).You can find all six
volumes HERE.

Two volumes of BRAVE
EAGLE – CHIEF OF THE CHEYENNES (1955) have been released, and though only 26
episodes were made, this unique series is a must-see. The only series produced by Roy Rogers other
than his own THE ROY ROGERS SHOW, BRAVE EAGLE was the first TV series ever to
feature an American Indian as the lead character. I don’t know if the fact that Roy’s great
grandmother on his mother’s side was Choctaw in any way motivated him to make
the show, but regardless of what triggered it, BRAVE EAGLE is a fascinating,
and often successful, experiment.

Keith Larsen, who three
years later would have his most memorable role as Robert Rogers on the series
NORTHWEST PASSAGE, played the wise, patient and strong Brave Eagle, who was
trying to preserve his peoples’ traditions while helping them to coexist with
the white man. While Larsen was of
Nordic background, the actor who portrayed his adopted son, Keena, was Hopi
Anthony Numkena; and Brave Eagle’s romantic interest, Morning Star, was played
by a Sioux, Kim Winona. Her father,
Brave Eagle’s half-Indian medicine man/advisor Smokey Joe, a smart side-kick, was
played by Bert Wheeler, who had once been half of the comedy team Wheeler and
Woolsey. The plots by and large are
nothing like the plots of most Westerns series.
A few revolve around the problems of dealing with white men in general,
and soldiers in particular. But most are
about conflicts within the Indian community, many of whom are shown as remarkably
warlike. Particularly memorable in
volume one is SHIELD OF HONOR, where Lee Van Cleef plays a Pawnee Chief eager
to enlist the Cheyenne in his war against a third tribe. When persuasion fails, Lee tries to
manipulate Brave Eagle through his son Keena.
Many plots center around Keena, a boy who is likable, but at times so
callow that he’s not above stranding another boy on a mountain if he thinks
Brave Eagle likes him too much. While the print quality varies widely, and the
shows may have their awkward moments, their sincere attempt to tell original Western
stories from a native point of view is striking. Both volumes are available HERE.

And now, for something
completely different, there is JOHN CARRADINE GOES FISHING. Made in 1947, shot in home-movie beautiful
Kodachrome, this is the nearly hour-long story of a Wisconsin fishing trip,
with inexperienced angler Carradine learning
the ropes from pros Tubby Toms and Stu Pritchard. While long John gamely tries to keep things
lively, it often feels like you’re watching folks fish in real time. Tubby and Stu try to promote some humor, but
they are no Abbott and Costello – more like Brown and Carney actually. (Too obscure?
Okay, the guys from ZOMBIES ON BROADWAY.) If you can make it through to the end, it’s
worth it to hear John’s speech about how much he’s learned about both the sport
and sportsmanship, adding, “Most of all, you’ve taught me the principals of
conservation,” while all the time holding a fish that’s gasping desperately.

Also included is an
episode of Forrest Tucker’s first series, CRUNCH AND DES (1956), about a pair
who run a fishing boat, and three vintage fishing shorts. You can find it HERE.

A WORD ON WESTERNS,
WEDNESDAY, JULY 20TH AT THE
AUTRY!

Ruta Lee

Once again Rob Word
brings his ‘A Word On Westerns’ program to the Autry. Usually they begin with lunch at the
Crossroads Café, but the event has become so popular that lunch will come
after: they’re beginning instead with interviews in the Wells Fargo Theatre –
doors open at 10:30. The topic will be, ‘What
makes a good Western?’ Providing the
answers will be several guests, including the lovely Ruta Lee, who has alternated good
girls and femmes fatale on GUNSMOKE, BONANZA, MAVERICK and many others. She will be joined by the also lovely BarBara
Luna, who has been the fiery senorita on ZORRO, HIGH CHAPARRAL, FIRECREEK, and
many more. They will be joined by cowboy
and singer Rusty Richards, stuntman and director Mic Rodgers, and the sagebrush
musical stylings of Will Ryan and the Saguaro Sisters. Don’t miss it!

BarBara Luna

THAT’S A WRAP!

It’s hard to accept
that on Saturday, July 23rd, the final episode, #57, of HELL ON
WHEELS, will air. I personally think
that Joe and Tony Gayton created the best Western series since the days of
GUNSMOKE. The current revival of
interest in the Western started with DEADWOOD, but the sustained quality of
story-telling on HELL is what has led to the now happily frequent appearance of
new Western features, big-budget and small, and TV series and mini-series. After the final show, I plan to drink a toast
to Cullen Bohannon (Anson Mount), a toast to ‘Doc’ Durant (Colm Meany), one to
Eva (Robin McLeavy), one to The Swede (Christopher Heyerdahl), one to Elam Ferguson
(Common)… I won’t be driving for a
while. Unless it’s a wagon. Thanks for the memories!

Happy Trails,

Henry

All Original Content Copyright
July 2016 by Henry C. Parke – All Rights Reserved